Where To Start With Overclocking

[justinblake737]

I haven't ever overclocked a CPU. I have about 5 that are capable (2 for sure) of overclocking. I have an Intel Jayhawk (unreleased; don't have a motherboard with a high TDP to use it) and an AMD FX-6300 Unlocked. My i5-8400 can't be overclocked, as it's only Turbo.

The other 3 are Xeon engineering samples. I have an E7 Westmere 10 cores @2.6GHz Q5AP, a Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge 8 cores @1.6GHz QA89, and a Xeon E5-26xx V3 Haswell 14 cores @2.1GHz QDBW A0 stepping. Can any of those be overclocked to over 4GHz?

If not, then where do I start with my FX-6300? It's on a motherboard I don't use anymore. It used to all be in my gaming computer, but I've upgraded to the i5. It only has the stock cooler, but I could put the large air cooler on it from my i5 temporarily to overclock.

To what speed can I overclock the FX-6300 with an air cooler? 4.6GHz? 5GHz?
And if I buy a under-$100 liquid cooler, what frequency?

Any information is greatly appreciated!

 

[drea.drechsler]

I haven't ever overclocked a CPU. I have about 5 that are capable (2 for sure) of overclocking. I have an Intel Jayhawk (unreleased; don't have a motherboard with a high TDP to use it) and an AMD FX-6300 Unlocked. My i5-8400 can't be overclocked, as it's only Turbo.

The other 3 are Xeon engineering samples. I have an E7 Westmere 10 cores @2.6GHz Q5AP, a Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge 8 cores @1.6GHz QA89, and a Xeon E5-26xx V3 Haswell 14 cores @2.1GHz QDBW A0 stepping. Can any of those be overclocked to over 4GHz?

If not, then where do I start with my FX-6300? It's on a motherboard I don't use anymore. It used to all be in my gaming computer, but I've upgraded to the i5. It only has the stock cooler, but I could put the large air cooler on it from my i5 temporarily to overclock.

To what speed can I overclock the FX-6300 with an air cooler? 4.6GHz? 5GHz?
And if I buy a under-$100 liquid cooler, what frequency?

Any information is greatly appreciated!

Depends on what motherboard you'll be putting it on and your tolerance for risk (should be pretty low for such old hardware). I could get 4.4-4.5 with my 6300 on a hyper TX3 so I wouldn't be surprised if you get 4.7-4.8G on a 240mm AIO and a capable motherboard.

Start by increasing multiplier to ~4.0G just to see if it's stable without adding voltage. You'll definitely need to get a decent aftermarket cooler before you add voltage to go higher .